Ben Falcone Doesn't Want You to Freak Out

What’s Scarier Than Thunder? A Lot! But His Smart and Funny New Kids' Book Helps

Perhaps you wake in the wee hours, dreading mortality, the invasion of Taiwan, or credit card bills. That’s the human condition—and it starts young. Ben Falcone was an anxious kid who grew up to be a professional funny person. As an actor, director, and writer, he shaped Tammy, The Boss, Life of the Party, and Thunder Force, created Netflix’s God's Favorite Idiot, and launched the podcast Hildy the Barback and the Lake of Fire. He met his wife and creative partner, Melissa McCarthy, in the legendary L.A. comedy troupe The Groundlings, and together they’ve built a life telling stories that blend absurdity and heart—one that includes their greatest improvisation, raising daughters Vivian, 17, and Georgette, 15.

When the girls were little, Falcone loved reading aloud to them. Somewhere along the way, he and a pal dreamed up a ditty to help soothe kids when they were scared. That evolved into a series of silly rhymes, which became his new book, What’s Scarier Than Thunder. His kids have aged out of bedtime stories—“Now they’d be like, ‘Dad, this is just too weird,’” he jokes—but he hopes to keep the magic alive for other families. “Since I’m too old to do it anymore, part of the impulse in writing the book was imagining younger parents reading it with their kids—hopefully laughing and being silly,” he says. “It’s something maybe not every parent does as much as they should.”

Illustrated by Kevin Cornell, the yarn follows a dad helping his child through a storm by conjuring supposedly scarier alternatives—like a snake with fangs and uneven bangs or a dragon named Rance with ants in his pants—until worries melt into giggles.

We caught up with Falcone to talk about fear, funniness, and fatherhood—and why his book might help more than a few anxious adults, too.—JDH

---

BW: Did a favorite story you read to your kids inspire you to write a children’s book?

BF: When I was reading to my kids, I would go for Shel Silverstein—Where the Sidewalk Ends—and when they wanted something a little longer, they really got into Dragons Love Tacos [by Adam Rubin]. The drawings are great, and it’s a very performative book. I think that might have been the one they gravitated to most, but we had millions of books. The floor was littered with them.

BW: In writing this book, is it a little sad that your kids are past the point where they would appreciate it the way a 7-year-old would?

BF: I guess it’s just perfectly on par with my life. Talk about a late bloomer. I figure things out about eight years too late—that is a Ben Falcone specialty. But I’ve always tended toward feeling anxious, and I definitely empathize with others who feel that way. The hope is that you can read this book to your kid and help them take away something that feels a little scary. Because it could be thunder, but it really could be anything.

BW: Tariffs.

BF: (laughs) You could really go dark. But the idea is that you can just be silly about it. That’s one way I’ve found to get past those feelings—getting out of yourself and into something like a laugh or a moment with a friend. Hopefully. That’s the idea.

BW: What kept you up at night when you were a kid, and how did you manage that anxiety?

BF: I had hernia surgery in first grade and then another in eighth grade. The double whammy of hernias. It’s not a particularly serious surgery, but it was scary enough for me at the time, and I had trouble sleeping. My brother Flynn and I shared a room—I slept on the top bunk, and he slept on the bottom. He’s three years older and a good sleeper, and I would just lie there in this tiny space between me and the ceiling, unable to sleep.

What helped me was comic books. I remember my brother asking, What’s your favorite thing? And I said, I don’t know… comic books? And he said, Well, just think about comic books and go to sleep.

He was probably 15 or 16 at the time, just saying I should try it. And it worked. I thanked him, but I didn’t know where to put my comic books. My mom overheard that and put a little shelf on the top bunk—where there really should not have been a shelf—so I could keep my comics from falling down the bed. So, a kid who had trouble falling asleep could just read stories about superheroes beating up bad guys and go to sleep easily.

BW: You’ve done film, TV, podcasting, and authored books. Since coming out of The Groundlings, you’ve pursued a pretty eclectic creative path.

BF: I think from a very young age, I knew that creativity was going to save me—from whatever I felt I needed saving from. I could be writing a song. I could be writing a children’s book. I could be writing a movie. I could be acting in a movie. I could be directing a movie. I could be producing. I can handle the business parts of creativity, but they don’t fill my soul as much. The other things I mentioned—I would do them every day, whether I got paid or not. If it seems like there’s breadth to what I do, it’s because I more or less need to do it.

BW: What comes across about you and Melissa as parents is that you take your whole selves to work, especially in your tendency to dress up and perform. How do your kids roll with that now that they’re young adults?

BF: They don’t dress up like Melissa and I do. During the pandemic, we had a movie group where we Zoomed with friends and dressed up. We watched a bunch of Best Picture winners from history, so you’d have this Zoom with actors and directors all dressed as characters from the movie. Our kids would just say, Right… you’re doing that? It’s Friday night. Okay, cool.

They’re just used to seeing Melissa dressed up like a clown from The Greatest Show on Earth. They sort of dismiss it. They’ll never dress up, but they’re both super funny. They do what we in our house call “bits.” Is that everywhere? Do people say “doing a bit”?

BW: It has migrated out from the comedy world. In my family, my bits are not well received.

BF: But that’s part of it, right? My kids are funny, and they participate in the bits—they do voices, characters, and all that stuff around the house. As a dad, being 51 and everything, I love it when I do something they genuinely find funny. We all laugh together, and then they enhance it and make it a lot funnier. But sometimes I love it even more when they don’t enjoy the bit—when it’s a bad dad bit.

And then sometimes Melissa gets involved, and we do these awful versions of parents who think they’re funny. I think it’s actually funny, but if my kids enjoyed it too much, I probably wouldn’t do it. You want them to feel like, Aww, stop it! When you’re a dad and your kid is a teenager, there’s some lizard part of your brain that says, I should annoy them, just a little bit.

BW: That’s the cringe-comedy genius of being a dad. Who are these awful characters your kids hate but you insist on doing anyway?

BF: Basically, they’re really present parents who just want to be involved. They say things like, Okay, practice today is at five. So I’ll be bringing you a snack. What kind of snack would we like today? Or I think I’m going to reach out to your teacher… They engage in way too much eye contact, want to be involved in every minute detail of their child’s life, and are overly supportive. The kids hate them, but Melissa and I sort of love them.